YOU’D THINK WITH ALL THE ANGER, frustration, and incivility in America today, this wouldn’t be the best time to reprise Stephen Sondheim’s 1990 musical, “Assassins.” This brilliant play, with book by John Weidman, based on an idea by Charles Gilbert, Jr., chronicles the motivations and justifications that led nine troubled individuals to assassinate — or attempt to assassinate — the President of the United States. And even though it’s clever and entertaining, and the music is terrific, the whole concept is more than a little creepy!
It begins with Shannon Stoeke, as the Proprietor — a sort of evil instigator — urging the others, like a circus barker, to buy a gun, shoot a president and gain immortality. With all the assassins gathering around him, he sings “Everybody’s Got the Right” — to have a gun, to have a dream. Stoeke has a beautiful, powerful voice and he uses his role to bind the show together and keep it moving forward through history. Seconding him is Dana Reynolds as the Balladeer who, with her quiet solos, elaborates on the personal stories of each of the assassins.
Principal among them, of course, is John Wilkes Booth (Christopher Davis Carlisle), considered the “pioneer” who led the way for the assassins who followed. In his long black silk coat and blacker moustache Carlisle even looks like Booth as he keeps returning to the stage to inspire and urge on the others. He considers himself a hero for having shot Lincoln, blaming Lincoln for tearing the country apart and for the subsequent “blood on the clover.”
Next, the attempted assassination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by a man named Giuseppe Zangara, in which the then-mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak, stepped in front of the president and took the bullet in his stead, is remembered by the crowd of bystanders in a rousing chorus of “How I Saved Roosevelt.”
Sondheim, as always, fills the production with gorgeous music and lyrics and a festive air that is difficult to reconcile with the grisly subject he is illuminating. Especially in the climactic number “November 22, 1963,” in which Booth and the others urge Lee Harvey Oswald to become “a force of history.”
Directing this West Coast Ensemble production is Richard Israel.“Assassins” will continue at the El Centro Theater, 804 N. El Centro Ave. in Hollywood Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 through Aug. 31. Call (323) 460-4443 for tickets.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 1, 2008. Read the original PDF.